Trump’s Border Wall Charade Limps Forward

When faced with a presidential vision as dystopian as that possessed by Donald Trump, it is sometimes a blessing that his administration is also farcically ineffectual. Take Trump’s beleaguered “big, beautiful, powerful wall,” the cornerstone of his campaign which, he fancied, would span the 1,900 mile-long breadth of the dusty, arid American-Mexican border, tightly shutting-off U.S. soil from the smear of “criminals,” “rapists,” and all-round “bad hombres.” The possibility of his wall sparked international outrage. The Pope unsubtly called on Christians “to not raise walls but bridges.” German chancellor Angela Merkel warned that “cutting oneself off will not solve the problem,” and, more recently, British politician Jeremy Corbyn took to the stage at Glastonbury festival and, introducing Run the Jewels to a roaring crowd of thousands, yelled, “If you can see that far.. look on the wall right over there that surrounds this wonderful festival and there's a message on that wall for President Donald Trump. It says build bridges not walls.” (Former Mexican president Vincente Fox was more blunt: “Mexico is not going to pay for that f--king wall.”)

Amid the ongoing clamor of this fervent opposition, not a brick has been laid. But, in the latest twist in the ongoing saga, officials at the Department of Homeland Security said last night that Trump’s wall will finally have a foundation, and construction of prototypes will start this summer. This initial step towards the realization of Trump’s multi-billion dollar dream will apparently take place in San Diego, chosen both because of its mature infrastructure, and its insufficient, already-built fence that has been breached more than 800 times in the past year.

“We own that land, have access to it and it’s a good place to start testing in a real-world environment,” Ronald D. Vitiello, acting deputy commissioner at Customs and Border Protection, explained sagely at a news briefing Tuesday night. He did admit, however, that his agency had identified 130 miles of border in the region upon which a wall would not stand, due to inconveniently rough terrain and bodies of water. “It's not necessary. The natural barrier already slows people down as they're trying to cross the border...So we've ruled out those obvious, common sense places.” It’s not just this rogue 130 miles that will remain unwalled, however. Secretary of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly has clarified there are no plans to build a wall along the entire stretch of the border. Moving forward, aside from the problems chucked up by geography, border areas will be proposed according to factors such as census date, arrest rates and engineering and design feasibility—a far cry from Trump’s glitzy, totalitarian vision of a “30 foot” facade.

Engineering and design have been fundamental to the selection of the upcoming prototypes, and for the past months, numerous companies have been engaged in an Apprentice-style battle, penning designs that adhere to a raft of baseline standards, which include being “physically imposing in height”, possessing “anti-climb” features and boasting a layer of “aesthetically pleasing” color on the U.S.-facing north side. Unsurprisingly, the south-side as been spared such deluxe treatment. When erected, this flamboyant pageant of walls will be “pretty close together,” Vitiello said. “There’ll probably be more than one or two of them there at the same time but we’ll have to sequence it so they’re not in each other’s way. I don’t have that plan but I know out team is working through it.”

Vitiello’s breezy nonchalance, and lack of planning, ties in with the overall rhythm of the wall narrative. In January, Trump signed an executive order and announced “immediate construction of a border wall.” By April, without even a stake stuck in the ground, he took to his Twitter. “Don't let the fake media tell you that I have changed my position on the WALL,” he typed, with staccato force. “It will get built and help stop drugs, human trafficking etc.” His WALL faced further decrescendo after it encountered difficulties in Congress who, passing the budget, suffered a bipartisan balking at its proposed cost (Trump's administration was seeking $3.6 billion for the 2017 and 2018 budgets for just over 100 miles of fencing). Denying the funding, they instead sent money to the existing border agencies, aimed at enhancing technology and defense. Despite Congress not passing the funding, homeland security officials used $20 million allocated to other programs to pay for prototypes.

Even if the San Diego prototypes are erected over the summer, this does not necessarily mean that miles more of wall will follow, especially if department coffers have already been scraped thin. So, for now at least, the wall remains largely symbolic, an emblem of Trump’s insular, provocative, and increasingly bizarre tenure in the White House—indeed, last week, speaking at a rally in Iowa, the climate change sceptic, having just pulled out of the Paris climate accord, suggested that his fictitious wall would be clad in solar panels. “Pretty good imagination, right? It’s my idea.”

Trump’s supporters repeatedly argue he should not be taken literally, flippantly deeming his more odious opinions and strange stances as, simply, instances of imaginative allegory. The wall, then, should be seen as just this: a metaphor for his presidency—attractive to some, aggressively unappealing to rafts of non-supporting bad hombres, and, despite the bellicose confidence of accompanying rhetoric, unable to get itself off the ground.